Everything is Not Enough

LoveReading Says

Continuing the enthralling stories of three Black women navigating life, love, social prejudice and racism in Sweden that began In Every Mirror She’s Black, Lola Akinmade Akerstroem’s Everything is Not Enough is a riveting, razor-sharp follow-up.

As the women face increasingly appalling challenges, their lives interlink in unexpected, transformational ways. You’ll be rooting for them to find freedom along every step of the rocky road. In a grippingly unsettling opening scene, we discover Muna survived throwing herself under a train. As her named next of kin, her friend Yasmiin has been called to her hospital bed, wondering what drove Muna to suicide, desperate for her to be woken from her medically induced coma.

Meanwhile, Kemi is facing more challenges as Director of Global Diversity and Inclusion at a big-league marketing company owned by Jonny Lundin, a member of one of Sweden’s most rich and powerful families. Feeling “she carries the impossible. A deep-seated responsibility to show the world she’s a Black woman making it in Sweden to inspire others”, Kemi embarks on an edge-of-your-seat path of destruction when she starts an affair with a married colleague, who happens to be Jonny’s best friend. While Kemi “feels like she’s choking under her colleagues’ judgment”, white man Ragnar faces no judgement, no penalty.

Then there’s Brittany. Married to Jonny, and mother to their daughter Maya, she feels horribly trapped, though still dreams of becoming a designer. Rejected by Jonny’s elitist family, she sets about uncovering what happened to his ex who looked exactly like her, and plotting her escape from his fetishising control.

Compelling, compassionate and insightful, Everything is Not Enough exposes the worst of white privilege and male coercive control while showing the possibility of escape and freedom.

Joanne Owen

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